


Say I love you when you're not listening

by 9crimes



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Romance, Unrequited Love, that's totally not unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9crimes/pseuds/9crimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he tells her he loves her, she’s unconscious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say I love you when you're not listening

The first time he tells her he loves her she’s unconscious. 

She’s been injured before (too many times, he’ll never really forgive himself for any of them) but this is the first time she’s been unconscious for any amount of time(ok she’s knocked out on pain meds but still. She’s unconscious and he’s not used to seeing her like this, still and peaceful).

Also the first time they’ve taken her to the hospital. 

He’s spent the last few years telling himself to keep his distance, she’s not for him, forget about it. But when he’s being honest with himself (it happens every once in a while, in moments like this where life feels like something precious and not just something he has to get through every day) he knows it was always going to end up here. He’s always known that this thing between them would come to a head.

It’s pretty cliché, he thinks with a frown. Girl almost dies, boy finally admits he loves her. Cliches are different, though, when you’re in them. Nothing about this feels cliché. 

It feels like his reality. It feels terrifying.

The words tumble out of his mouth in a gruff whisper. He grabs her hand and for the first time lets himself enjoy touching her. He doesn’t worry about making sure he doesn’t hold on for too long. Her hands are small and he can’t stop thinking about how many times she’s saved his life using just her tiny fingers. 

He knows she’ll be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours, after the anesthesia wears off. Then she’ll yell at him for bringing her to the hospital. He’ll blame Digg. Digg will roll his eyes and mumble. 

He doesn’t sleep that night, holds her hand until she wakes up.

Everything goes back to normal a few days later (well, their version of normal). Except that he’s told her he loves her and he doesn’t know how to pretend that’s not true anymore, not now that the words have left his mouth and he’s allowed himself to think of the possibility that she could be for him, after all. 

It’s not their time yet, he knows that, but since that night in the hospital he’s done with keeping his distance and forcing himself to deny what he feels.

He smiles more (so does she). 

He starts getting her coffee every morning. He’s done it before, every once in a while when he can tell she’s especially tired or sad. But now it’s every day. She’s surprised every time, and it makes him feel guilty for his aloofness in the past. He’s determined that soon she won’t think twice about small gestures like this (he’s already planning for the not-so-small gestures. She’s not even close to ready for those).

He looks at her more, doesn’t force himself to look away from her as she’s typing away with that confident look on her face she gets when she’s in her zone, or when she’s training with Digg. He notices so many things about her now that he is letting himself look at her. His favorite is how she fixes her ponytail. She has this whole process, first she takes it down (that’s his favorite part), then she brushes through it with her fingers one, two, three times. Then she gathers her hair in her left hand and puts the band in it with her right. She twists the band 2 or three times, depending on how stressed she is at the moment (four times if she’s really stressed).

Every time he leaves the foundry for the night he makes an excuse to touch her, just in case it’s the last time. Sometimes it’s just a brush of her arm or a quick squeeze of her hand. The first time he kissed her forehead was before he left on a particularly…serious outing. He’s buzzing for hours afterwards, and not because of the fight. 

He falls more in love with her every day. 

She goes on a date about 3 months after that night in the hospital. His fists clench and then flex when she tells him, but he smiles and tells her to have a good time. If he hits a little harder than usual when he’s sparring with Digg that night, well, nobody’s perfect.

The next morning she arrives late to the office and that makes him feel a little panicky, but her smile when she sees him watching her makes everything pretty much ok.

He swallows and tells himself not to ask her about her date as he walks towards her with her coffee. 

They never talk about that date, but then she doesn’t go out with the guy again so he’s content to let it lie. He knows she talked to Digg about it, and that’s good. He’s realized over the last few months how close she and Digg got while he was trying to stop himself from falling in love with her. He knows she values their friendship, but he also knows it’s very different than the friendship she has with Digg. Digg has never held her at arm’s length to try to protect himself. He’s thankful that she’s had Digg all this time, and even though he’s trying to be a better friend to her now he gets that there are things she’d rather talk to Digg about.

They go on like this for a few months, Oliver telling her he loves her every day without actually saying the words.

Until he does say the words (again). 

She’s very conscious, but it’s not exactly the perfect moment as she is in the foundry and he is very much not in the foundry.

He’s on a business trip, in Japan. The words have run through his mind so many times over the last 6 months, he’s said them to himself almost daily. He supposes he should have seen something like this coming.

She’s giving him the notes from the meeting he missed that afternoon, and it just slips out. There’s not really a reason he says it. He’s thinking about how she might look at that moment, probably wearing one of her blue dresses because she likes those best and she always tries to look perfect for meetings (‘They need to take me seriously, you know, being an Executive Assistant could actually be a very powerful position’). Her hair might be down, since she’s out of the meeting. Yea, her hair is definitely down. Sometimes when she’s sitting in her chair in the foundry and she’s not wearing heels her feet barely hit the ground. So yea he’s imagining all these things, and the thought pops into his head as it has daily (more than that, even) over the last 6 months. Only this time he says it out loud. 

When he realizes what he’s done his only regret is that he can’t see her face. 

There’s complete silence on her end of the phone and he really really wishes he could see her face.

‘Felicity? I…’

‘Um. I don’t…’

He tells her they’ll talk when he gets home, practically begs her to meet him at the airport.

He feels almost guilty when he sees her waiting for him. She looks unsure and confused, things he hasn’t been in months. He knows how he feels but she’s still where they were back on that night in the hospital. 

He doesn’t even say hi.

‘I meant it. I love you’.

Third time.

Her reaction isn’t what he thought it would be.

‘Why?’ is her first response, followed closely by ‘Are you sure?’ 

It breaks his heart a little bit that she finds it so hard to believe that he loves her. He wants to spend every day showing her he’s sure, telling her all the reasons why.

He really hopes he’ll get a chance to do exactly that.

It takes her about a week to really understand.

She avoids him and he lets her, doesn’t push her to talk, doesn’t try to manipulate situations so that they’re left in a room alone together (not that he’d ever done that before. Of course not). But, he won’t lie and say that he’s not a little bit miserable about it all. He’s not even a little bit surprised that she was taken off guard by his confession, he knows that she was completely oblivious to his feelings. The fact that she’s seemingly unhappy and unwilling to even make eye contact with him, though, well that’s worrying. He’s pretty sure she’s trying to think of a way to let him down easy. 

The Monday after he told her she walks straight into his office. She would normally go to her cubicle first and get everything ready for her day before greeting him. Not today. 

He holds out her coffee cup for her. She stares at it. When she looks up at him her eyes are determined and beautiful and vulnerable and he’s not sure he remembers what it was like before her. Before he loved her. 

‘Coffee. What is that all about? Why did you suddenly start getting me coffee? 6 months ago you didn’t even know how I took my coffee. And I know those flowers were from you! If you thought I’d stop at calling the shop and trying to get the name of the person who sent them, you were wrong. Also ‘Gulliver King’ as your secret-flower-buying code name? It’s like you _wanted_ to get caught!’

He smiles and shrugs at that. Ok so he had kind of wanted to get caught.

‘OH and letting me pick the restaurant at lunches? Even though you knew I’d pick that Ethiopian place you hate? And the kissing! On the cheek! I mean, what was that, what is _any of this_?’

The smile falls from his face when he sees a tear run down her cheek. He steps closer to her, runs his thumb down the path the tear just took.

‘Hey. You’re crying?’

‘No, it’s fine, it’s just…I never thought you’d…I was so ok with being your partner, your friend. Being one of the people you rely on. And then…it’s just been so hard the last few months…it seemed like you were starting to feel the same but then that’s just not…it’s been _so_ confusing Oliver and I don’t…I don’t know’

He’s pretty sure he stops breathing when she says _‘starting to feel the same_ ….’ The same? The same as what? Is she saying she feels the same? 

‘I’ve always felt…this way. There was no ‘starting to’. It’s always been this way for me’. Apparently word vomit is now a thing for him (The Hazards of Falling in Love with Felicity Smoak…he could write that book). But he needs her to know. The reality of this is becoming clear and he thinks they’ll be laughing about it soon (and damn if that doesn’t make his heart hurt in the most amazing way, the image of he and Felicity sitting on a couch somewhere laughing and reminiscing about that time they both thought the other wasn’t in love with them). It’s like one of those soap operas his mother would watch during lunch in the summertime…him in love with her, thinking she didn’t feel the same, torturing himself over it, while she was convinced that he only saw her as a friend, feeling equally tortured. So yea, this isn’t the time for the flowery speeches and grand gestures (though those will be happening. Fuck he can’t wait for those things to happen). This is the time to make it 100% clear to her that he’s all in, no more games.

His hand is on her cheek, telling her he’s sorry, so sorry for all the pain and confusion. 

His forehead presses against hers and he can smell her tears, tears that remind him that she is strong and reliable and confident, but also soft and unsure. Reminds him that her scars are not visible to the naked eye, but they are there nonetheless and they run deep. 

Her lips, though. Her lips are smiling. Her lips tell him that she is happy, and god that’s what he really wants. 

The first time Felicity tells Oliver she loves him, it comes out in a whisper. His lips are just barely touching hers and he feels the words before he hears them. The phrase has never sounded better. 


End file.
